English translation:
"Koblenz has a powerful argument. It’s called The Devourer."

I wasn’t familiar with Koblenz vacuum cleaners, so looked into it — a bit of history from the company’s website:Koblenz is an international manufacturer of domestic and industrial floor care products, voltage regulators, battery backups and washers.

The company was founded on July 15, 1959 as a manufacturer of voltage regulators, motors and pumps. During the 1960´s, the company added vacuum cleaners and shampoo/polishers to its product line.

In 1961 Koblenz developed its first vacuum cleaner, with an all-metal chassis and a single stage motor. The introduction of this vacuum cleaner in foreign markets was a success due to the ruggedness and durability of the product design. In 1968 Koblenz introduced the first line of Rug Shampooers and Floor Polishers. In 1972 the company started manufacturing washing machines. In 1998 the company introduced a Total Floor Care System to satisfy the every day needs of consumers worldwide.

Koblenz has over 2000 full time Employees including a complete engineering staff, state of the art test labs, and prototype facilities. All this operates in a main manufacturing plant of over 300,000 square feet.

Hotchkiss cars were made between 1903 and 1955 by the French company Hotchkiss et Cie in Saint-Denis, Paris. The badge for the marque showed a pair of crossed cannons, evoking the company’s history as an arms manufacturer.

The company’s first entry into car making came from orders for engine components such as crankshafts which were supplied to Panhard et Levassor, De Dion-Bouton and other pioneering companies and in 1903 they went on to make complete engines. Encouraged by two major car distributors, Mann and Overton of London and Fournier of Paris, Hotchkiss decided to start making their own range of cars and purchased a Mercedes Simplex for inspiration and Georges Terasse, previously of Mors, was taken on as designer.

Early cars

The first Hotchkiss car, a 17 CV four-cylinder model, appeared in 1903. The engine of the 20 CV type C was heavily based on the Mercedes Simplex except that wherever possible it used ball bearings rather than plain ones (including the crankshaft) and except the Hotchkiss drive. Six-cylinder models, the types L and O followed in 1907.
The ball bearing engines lasted until the 30CV type X of 1910. In that same year Hotchkiss moved into a smaller car market with the 2212cc type Z.
With the outbreak of World War I, the factory turned to war production and a subsidiary plant was opened in Coventry, England. Car production resumed in France 1919 with the pre war types AD, AD6, AF and AG.

Inter war production

After an attempt to enter the luxury market with the AK, which did not get beyond the prototype stage, the company decided on a one model policy and introduced the Coventry designed AM in 1923. Later that year the Coventry plant was sold to Morris. Henry Ainsworth (1884–1971) and A.H. Wilde who had run it, moved to Paris to become general manager and chief engineer of the car division respectively.

In 1926 construction of the new factory in the Boulevard Ornano was completed and Hotchkiss bought a steel pressing company allowing in-house manufacture of bodies. The one model policy lasted until 1929 when the six-cylinder AM73 and AM80 models were announced.

The AM models were replaced by a new range in 1933 with a new naming system. The 411 was an 11CV model with four-cylinder engine, the 413 a 13CV four and the 615, 617 and 620 were similar six-cylinder types. The 1936 686, which replaced the 620, was available as the high-performance Grand Sport and 1937 Paris-Nice with twin carburettors and these allowed Hotchkiss to win the Monte Carlo Rally in 1932, 1933, 1934, 1939, 1949 and 1950.

Second World War

The armament side of the company and the body stamping plant were nationalised in 1936 by the Front Populaire government. The car company in 1937 took over Amilcar. With re-armament speeding up they also started making military vehicles and light tanks. When France declared war, in September 1939, Hotchkiss were sitting on a army order for 1,900 H35 and H39 tanks powered by six-cylinder motors of respectively 3.5 and 6 litres capacity, and at the time of the German invasion in May 1940 they were still working through the order.[1] However, as the military situation deteriorated the decision was taken, on 20 May 1940, to abandon the Saint-Denis plant which by now was fully concentrated on war production.[1] There was a disorderly evacuation, initially towards Auxerre and then Moulins and then further towards the south, as employees desperately tried to keep information on the military production out of the hands of the Germans.[1] However, the national capitulation implicit in the signing of the armistice on 22 June left these efforts looking somewhat irrelevant, and most of the employees drifted back in the ensuing weeks.[1] Two exceptions were the Commercial Director, Jacques Jacobsen and the English born General Director, Henry Ainsworth, both of whom managed to avoid capture and to leave France.[1] During the war, like many businesses in the occupied (northern) zone, the company was obliged to work for the occupiers and was engaged in the repair of military vehicles.[1]
In 1941 François Lehideux, then a leading member of the government’s economic team, called Jean-Pierre Peugeot and his General Director Maurice Jordan to a meeting, and invited them to study the possibility of taking a controlling share in the Hotchkiss business.[1] The suggestion from Lehideux derived from a German law dated 18 October 1940 authorising the confiscation of businesses controlled by Jews.[1] The Peugeot business itself had been operating, grugingly, under overall German control since the summer of 1940. In any event, in July 1942 Peugeot took a controlling share in the Hotchkiss business and towards the end of 1942 the names of Peugeot and Jordan were listed as members of the Hotchkiss board.[1] There is no evidence of any attempt to combine the operations of the two businesses, however: after the war Peugeot would relinquish their holding in Hotchkiss.
With liberation in 1944, Ainsworth returned and production restarted in 1946 with the pre-war cars, a light truck and a tractor.

Post war models

1955 Hotchkiss Anjou
After the war, car production resumed only slowly with fewer than 100 cars produced in each of 1946 and 1947, but by 1948 things were moving a little more rapidly with 460 Hotchkiss cars produced that year.[2] This volume of output was wholly insufficient to carry the company, although truck production was a little more successful with more than 2,300 produced in 1948,[2] and it was support from the truck volumes and from the Jeep based M201 that enabled the company to stagger on as a car producer slightly more convincingly than some of France’s other luxury car makers, at least until the mid 1950s. The cars that represented the business in the second half of the 1940s were essentially the company’s prewar designs. The 2,312 cc four-cylinder car was now branded as the Hotchkiss 864 while the six-cylinder car was badged as the Hotchkiss 680 with a 3,016 cc engine or as the Hotchkiss 686 with the 3,485 cc engine.[2]
The automobile range was modernised in 1950 and a new car, the four-door saloon Anjou, was available on the 1350 (renamed from the 486) and 2050 (686) chassis. The Anthéor cabriolet was added in 1952. In 1948 Hotchkiss had bought the rights to the Grégoire front-wheel-drive car and this car entered production in 1951 but was expensive. Sales in general were falling and in 1950 Ainsworth retired. The Peugeot family sold their interest in the company. Coupé and cabriolet versions of the Hotchkiss-Grégoire were announced in 1951, but sales did not improve, and production stopped in 1952 after only 247 were made.

Merger and closure

Hotchkiss merged with Delahaye in 1954 to become Société Hotchkiss-Delahaye, but car production stopped in 1955 to be replaced by licence built Jeeps. In 1956 the company was taken over by Brandt, a household appliance maker, to become Hotchkiss-Brandt, who were again taken over in 1966 by Thomson-Houston. Military vehicles were made until 1967 and trucks until 1971.
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KItchenAid Artisan – ND0_5479Image by Nicola since 1972
The idea of a stand mixer was formulated by Herbert Johnson, an engineer working at the Hobart Corporation. He had been inspired after seeing a baker mix dough, and thought that there must be a better way of doing the task. Development began, in 1914, the model "H" mixer was launched for industrial work. The U.S. Navy ordered mixers for two new Tennessee-class battleships, the California and the Tennessee, as well as the U.S. Navy’s first dreadnought battleship, the South Carolina. In 1917, Hobart stand mixers became standard equipment on all U.S. Navy ships, prompting development to begin on the first home models.
The first machine to carry the KitchenAid name was the 10 quart C-10 model, introduced in 1918 and built at Hobart’s Troy Metal Products subsidiary in Springfield, OH.[2] Prototype models were given to the wives of factory executives, and the product was named when one stated "I don’t care what you call it, but I know it’s the best kitchen aid I’ve ever had!" They were initially marketed at the farmhouse kitchen and were available in hardware stores.[3] But owing to the difficulty in convincing retailers to take up the product, the company recruited a mostly female sales force, which sold the mixers door-to-door.[1] The C-10 machine was also marketed heavily towards soda fountains and small commercial kitchens, and was also sold under the FountainAid and BakersAid model names.[4]

In 1922, KitchenAid introduced the H-5 mixer as its new home-use offering.[5] The H-5 mixer was smaller and lighter than the C-10, and had a more manageable five quart bowl. The model "G" mixer, about half the weight of the "H-5", was released in August 1928.[6] In the 1920s several other companies introduced similar mixers, with the Sunbeam Mixmaster becoming the most popular among consumers until the 1950s.

KitchenAid mixers remained popular, with the factory selling out of products each Christmas in the late 1930s. Having shut down production for the duration of the Second World War, the factory started up again in 1946 with production moving to Greenville, Ohio, to expand capacity.

The product range expanded beyond stand mixers for the first time in 1949, with dishwashers being introduced.[3]

In 1985, the company purchased the Chambers Company to incorporate its range of cookers into the KitchenAid brand.[1] After being cleared by a Federal appeals court in January 1986, Whirlpool Corporation were cleared to purchase KitchenAid after initial complaints regarding competition from dishwasher manufacturers White Consolidated Industries and Magic Chef were dismissed.[8] Refrigerators were added to the product line later in 1986.[1] The company used the popularity of celebrity chefs during the late 1980s to seize the chance to expand its customer range. In 1988, retailer Williams-Sonoma was opening new stores across the United States and released a cobalt blue stand mixer for the company. Although the retailer had been carrying KitchenAid products since 1959, the new stores introduced the mixers to a wider range of home cooks. This combined with a change in marketing strategy for KitchenAid, which resulted in a doubling of brand awareness over the course of the following three years.

KitchenAid began manufacturing blenders and other small appliances in the mid-1990s. The brand was further promoted by sponsoring the PBS show Home Cooking, and by introducing the mixers to television chefs such as Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Following the success with William-Sonoma, specific point of purchases were set up in department stores such as Kohl’s and Macy’s. Specific color mixers were released for specific retailers or to benefit charities, such as a pink mixer released to raise funds for breast cancer research or mixers sold at Target stores being available in that company’s signature shade of red. The ProLine range of appliances was launched in 2003 with an initial six month exclusivity agreement with Williams-Sonoma